King Lear

After watching this production of King Lear I can appreciate more and more what the BBC did in giving good productions to all the Shakespeare plays. Sad to say this has become badly dated.

Not to criticize Orson Welles who would have made a magnificent King Lear in a full blown big budget production for the big screen. He fills the role out fine here. But the production is a cut rate version literally.

Everything in the way of a subplot is a eliminated here. We only see what happens to that foolish old king when he decides to turn over power to his daughters and their husbands because he wants to enjoy a little peace and quiet. As Shakespeare said in another of his works "uneasy lies the head that wears the crown" and King Lear is looking for a life of some ease toward the end. As we know it all went disastrously wrong.

Alan Badel as the fool also stands out with his sly trenchant comments about the situation at hand. This was Orson Welles television debut and it was on the Omnibus program with Alastair Cooke's silky and intellectual narration. It also has the prehistoric look of early television.

You will see Orson Welles doing Shakespeare to better advantage in his own production of Othello, a bit less so in his MacBeth where Republic's penny pinching Herbert J. Yates constricted him considerably. But fans of Welles will definitely enjoy this.

This production was performed Live on the Omnibus TV series, which was the fore-runner to much of what PBS has become. The actors were directed by Peter Brook in 3 whirlwind weeks, and it features incidental music by Virgil Thompson... an impressive array of talent. It centers on a bravura performance by Welles in the title role, although Alan Badel also shines as the Fool.

Shot on a circular, 6-segment set with 2 cameras that traveled around the perimeter, it required innovative camera-work, especially at the end of scenes, where one camera had to sneak off to the next set to begin the following scene. The lighting is very contrasty and daring, sometimes even flaring the camera (unheard of for TV lighting). The confrontation between Lear and his two wicked daughters, for instance, is handled on one camera, very tight on Lear framed by the profiles of the daughters. The camera moves inches to the left or right, deftly shifting the dramatic axis of the scene moment by moment.

The production manager told me that during rehearsals, the prop man approached him in an agitated state, saying, "I just talked to Orson. For the mad scene, he wants a crown of thorns. Like Christ's... only bigger."

Once again IMDB is full of reviewers like coxxx011 who are too dumb to provide a rational review. Had he listen to the Alistair prolog he would have known thatn Peter took the sub characters out on purpose. In fact, he goes on at length to desribe this and explain why. What a jerk. This not withstanding, it's not a great production. The acting is rather wooden and the sets sparse -- perhaps due to limitations of an early TV adaption. I suspect Welles did his own makeup and it baely looks like him. Still, it's an interesting period peice from when TV actually broadcast real culture.

The film is in black and white video, and takes liberties with the plot. The Duke of Gloucester and his evil son Edmund, major characters in the play, are absent from the film. Orson Welles' King Lear costume makes him look like a refugee from Mystery Science Theater 3000.

This production of King Lear, which seems to be the fairy-tale version of Shakespeare's play, eliminates large portions of the script and some of the characters, and fails to achieve the emotional intensity of the text.

The costuming is rather outlandish, the ladies wearing Elizabethan ruffs and Lear sporting a cartoonish cape and crown.

Edgar does not exist except as Poor Tom, and Edmund has been eliminated entirely.

Orson Welles - large, surly, and fierce - is neither overblown nor understated; the rest of the actors, however, are frequently melodramatic in their readings.

The sets are stylized, and the film creates little real feeling of Lear being exposed to the elements; the only concession to realism is an occasional token gust of wind. The violence is also surrealistic, with slow-motion stabbings and bloodless eye-gouging.